


Words

by Sylv



Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylv/pseuds/Sylv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Titans attempt to learn Tamaranian. It's frustrating, and difficult, and Robin doesn't like it one bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words

Robin groaned and put his head in his hands. There was absolutely no way that he was ever going to be able to figure this out. Next to him, Raven seemed to be faring no better.

Tamaranian was unlike any language that he had ever attempted to learn before. He had thought that German had been hell until they had decided to try and learn a language that was not from this planet. Or even this solar system.

Raven was having trouble too. She explained to him that she had been working under the assumption that you basically did everything the exact opposite of Azarathean, since that was how it had seemed to work in the beginning. Once they had advanced, she had been getting everything so horrendously wrong that she had been forced to abandon that thought. That had left her confused and unable to do anything without immediately correcting herself. She still mostly floundered, attached as she was to her Azarathean linguistic skills.

Beast Boy would be doing well if his attention span wasn't so short. He seemed to have a knack for it, which Raven, disgruntled that the green changeling was doing better than she, attributed to the fact that Tamaranian made no logical sense at all, and neither did Beast Boy's thoughts. But he couldn't focus long enough to hear anything that would allow him to actually learn something.

Cyborg was doing the best out of all of them. Robin suspected that this had to do with his mechanical memory, which would allow him to store and call things up whenever he so wished. He memorized the things that he wanted to know easily, like the swear words, and the things he needed to know weren't much different. By now he was holding short conversations with Starfire, without her correcting him. The more he spoke, the faster he got. Morning conversations, being practically the same every day, were being performed quite rapidly, so that Robin couldn't understand what was being said. Starfire had informed him that it was actually pretty slow compared to how Tamaranians spoke on a regular basis. Robin couldn't imagine speaking faster than that.

Starfire was quite adept at English. She could speak it well in most situations without anyone being confused as to what she was saying. And despite the occasional misunderstanding between people (such as Starfire's use of phrases like 'I am the o and k'), which everyone had become used to now, there was nothing that they would complain about. However, there were times when Starfire was extremely upset and had problems expressing herself in English. She occasionally let loose a stream of rapid fire Tamaranian that no one could understand. These moments were trying for all, because no one was sure how much of an emergency it was, and whether or not Starfire needed immediate help.

She would get herself under control and be able to work through the English in her head, but sometimes it was too late, and it had cost them too many seconds already. It had been Robin who had initially come up with the idea that they all learn Tamaranian. Starfire had been touched that her friends would learn an entire language for her sake, and the others had been on board with the plan without any complaints.

Now, Robin was seriously regretting it. He was having problems simply wrapping his mind around the language. Tamaranian was ridiculously confusing for many reasons. For one thing, there didn't seem to be tenses in the same way that there was in English. There were  _inflections_ , but those seemed to change the tense sometimes, and at others seemed to change the words entirely. There were far too many exceptions to the rules for his liking.

Starfire smiled as though this wasn't one of the worst forms of torture in the world, and began to speak again. "Now we shall move onto titles. Let us take Raven as the first example. Raven is a female, so we would put a…"

"' _le_ ," supplied Cyborg easily.

Starfire nodded to him, "at the end of her name. However, Raven is younger than seventeen, so you must turn the  _'le_  into a  _'lea_. But I am speaking of Raven, so I cannot use _'lea_. This is because she is familiar to me, more so than  _'lea_. I consider her my sister." A brief smile in Raven's direction, which the empath returned tightly. It probably would have been warmer if they hadn't been learning a language that meandered mindlessly. "That would be  _xe'en_ , her name and  _'lea_  afterwards if she were blood related to me. She is not my real sister, so the  _xe'en_  is a  _ta'_  and the  _'lea_  moves to the front, making the final result  _ta''lea Raven_."

There was a blank stare from the girl who was the topic of discussion, who was trying to wrap her head around what Starfire had just said.

Beast Boy scrunched his nose up. "Would that make you  _ta''lea Starfire_?" he tried hesitantly.

Starfire shook her head with a smile that was almost patronizing. "No. I am seventeen, so I would be  _'le_. But I am also royalty on my home world, so I would be:  _eta_  before my name,  _Koriand'r_  as my full title and  _ta''le_  afterwards, if you were my non-blood relatives."

"So…  _eta Koriand'r ta''lea_?" Beast Boy asked again.

This time Starfire nodded and the boy grinned. "Alright!" he cheered.

"How familiar is familiar enough to use  _ta'_?" queried Robin, scratching his head.

"And how do you know someone's age to address them?" Raven questioned.

Cyborg wasn't saying anything; he was too busy putting the information in his memory for use at a later time.

Starfire attempted to explain. "When someone introduces themselves to you they are going to use their title so you know. And if you would consider someone a part of your family,  _ta'_  is used. It is a special bond, and therefore has its own title. Less familiar is the  _'le_  variations, and strangers are  _hal_  of some form. Of course, you only use titles when you are speaking about a person. When you are speaking  _to_ them you simply use their names unless you are not on familiar terms in which case only the  _'le_  variations are used."

"But what if you aren't sure how familiar someone is?" pressed Raven agitatedly, after decided to ignore that complicated corollary.

Starfire frowned. "You should be sure."

Cyborg finally spoke, satisfied that he had the information down well enough as notes. "That's only for girls though, right? What about guys?"

The alien smiled as Robin and Raven glared in their friend's direction. "Very well, we will proceed to males. It is different in several ways…"

"Several ways." Robin hissed to the mechanical teen, narrowing his eyes furiously. " _Several ways!_ "

A pen encased in black magic hurled itself at Cyborg's head.


End file.
